


The New Order II: Still With Me

by Viridian5



Series: The New Order [2]
Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character of Color, Episode Related, M/M, Oracles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-04-05
Updated: 2001-04-05
Packaged: 2017-10-02 07:46:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Angel burns his bridges, Doyle, Wesley, Cordelia, and Gunn try to put out the fires.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The New Order II: Still With Me

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for "City Of," "Hero," "War Zone," and second season through "Redirection," with tiny spoilers after that through to "Epiphany."
> 
> Sequel to "[The New Order](http://archiveofourown.org/en/works/4156)." Doyle was brought back to life as the new Oracle.

_"Just be still with me  
But it wouldn't believe what I've been through  
You've been so long  
Well, it's been so long._

_And I've been putting out the fire with gasoline...."_  
   -- "Cat People"  
Lyrics by David Bowie  
\---------------------------------------------------------------------------

"--on the fifth shelf on the set by the fourth table. You know the name of the book, but since I'm not sure you can even read, the binding is red, and what you need is on page 897, paragraphs three and four. Thing is, you could have fucking found this on your own with a little research. What the hell are Watchers teaching their young nowadays? You ever hear of the Dewey Decimal system, kid? Trust me, it works. Now get the hell out of here. I don't want to see you again unless you get a question you really can't answer on your own." The Netherworld flung him out through the portal for me. Nice girly scream, kid.

I never got tired of doing that.

It was a damned good thing I was picking these tricks up, because I needed to be able to protect myself here now that the portal no longer discriminated against people who didn't have pure hearts. Part of my greater control came from getting the hang of my job, and the other from the way the place seemed to obey me better when I was pissed off.

And I was really pissed off. I didn't want to hear another stupid question. Yeah, this kid brought me a nice bottle of Scotch as an offering--word was getting out about the new Oracle's tastes--but that didn't justify him or so many of the others wasting my time. The longer I was stuck in here, the less time I spent with the people I cared about. I was already missing out on big chunks of their lives, and Angel could use whatever help I could give him in finding Darla.

I wanted to find her too, though hardly out of any noble urge to keep her alive and with a soul. Dead and unable to actively fuck with Angel's head anymore fit more along the lines I was thinking.

But I was here instead. _We'd_ only asked the Oracles for important stuff during emergencies, so why couldn't the rest of the world get a clue?

I was starting to understand why the last two Oracles had been such bitchy, obnoxious bastards.

I hoped the kid ran crying to his mentor about what a mean bastard I was. The English Watchers were already ticked off that the new Oracle was a scruffy Irishman with a temper, and upsetting those snooty sons of bitches was one of the few things that amused me about my new job. Yeah, the kid was whining about me right now, and his mentor was making big noises about petitioning the Powers to get a replacement. Good luck.

Then the world went black before I showed up in Cordelia's living room. I was never going to get used to being 'ported in and out of the Netherworld depending on whether anyone needed me or not. Wonder how long I get to stick around this time before somebody has to call me back to ask where their fucking car keys are. I hated being jerked from place to place with no say-so.

To think, I'd been so worried about living with Cordelia and being attracted to Wes. I hadn't spent enough time with anybody for either to become a problem.

"Doyle?" Cordelia had done something with her hair. Nice cut, but the color was way too dark for her.

"Love the new 'do, Princess," I said. Then I really looked at _her_ once the shock of her new color started to fade. "Wait, what's wrong?"

"We hoped you'd show up here tonight," Cordy said.

Wes and Gunn walked out, and they looked kind of stunned too. I liked Gunn. When we first met he'd given me a look and said, "So, you're half-demon?" while I'd answered, "So, you're prejudiced?" His mouth had quirked a bit at that, and we'd been okay ever since.

Right now, Cordelia looked nervous, Gunn had gone blank, and Wes looked like he felt guiltier than usual. But he tended to blame himself for everything. I almost asked if somebody'd died, but then I realized that I didn't see Angel around. "Is Angel okay?" Please let him be all right. I hadn't spent enough time with him since I came back from the dead.

They just looked at me. Shite. Oh--

Then the Knowing hit me, and when I say "hit," I mean "hit." Usually it slid into my head painlessly, like the information had always been waiting in there, but this hurt like one of my old visions. I saw a room full of people, most of them Wolfram &amp; Hart lawyers, though some waiters and spouses also stood around. Almost everyone in the room stank of fear. Lindsey didn't. He'd scared me a bit from the first time I saw him. He had just enough goodness and self-destructiveness living inside him along with need, greed, deviousness, and ruthlessness to make him really unpredictable. Too many shades of gray in him, from smoke to charcoal. Too many paths, too many possibilities....

The other two who didn't were Darla and Drusilla.

A mini Knowing hit me on them. Dru's left me shuddering. Darla had been vamped again, and she was her old self except that she was more pissed off now.

Angel appeared, leaving me relieved that the massacre wouldn't happen and afraid that he'd get hurt. But he just spoke to them... then left them to their work. Locking the door so no one could escape. Then left the house completely, not even bothering to stick around to try to stake Darla and Drusilla.

Drusilla recognized him as her old father figure again as he closed the vault door.

He left one woman near the exterior door to bleed out onto the floor.

Then he went back to the hotel and calmly told Wes, Cordy, and Gunn what he'd done. He saw nothing wrong with it. When they said that he had to be careful, that he couldn't keep doing things like that, he fired them.

He looked so calm, so light and airy. Reasonable. This wasn't Angelus; this was Angel. Angel gone horribly wrong.

My Knowing returned to the locked wine cellar as Drusilla and Darla ripped a bloody swath through their victims. I could almost taste the blood in the air, and the screams--

I came to with Cordelia slapping my face. "Thank you so much for stopping that," I said. I couldn't quit shaking, but fortunately someone had put me on the couch, so I didn't have to worry about falling to the floor before I regained control of myself.

"I am never going to get used to that," Gunn said.

"You saw it, didn't you," Cordelia said. She knew.

"I almost got to see the massacre too," I replied.

"He didn't come back and tell us until hours after it was over. There was nothing we could do." Wes sounded like hell. He probably figured that he should have done something before this.

Hell, I felt the same way. If only I'd fucking been here, things might have been different. Yeah, I'd figured out what was up with his sudden odd sleeping habits, but that had been easy since images of Darla just about hung all over him. He kept on chasing her anyway. In fact, I'd been in the middle of telling him why he shouldn't when I got jerked back to the Netherworld of Eternal Watching. Both times. It made me wonder what the Powers might be up to.

"I have to talk to him," I said.

"We tried that and got pink-slipped for it," Cordelia answered.

"I died for him. It might hold more weight."

Gunn shook his head, and I didn't blame him. I also wished I hung out with company that would think that what I'd just said was shocking.

"It's worth a try," Wes said. I hurt for him. He loved Angel, and Angel had just kicked him to the curb for having an opinion. For caring.

Angel might do the same to me.

"We said we'd leave him alone, but Doyle didn't decide that. This could work," Cordelia said.

"Now I just have to get to him," I said. "This would be a great time for a 'port out, but my damned job doesn't work as a taxi service when I want it to."

"He's probably at the hotel," she said, watching for my reaction.

Fuck. This was going to hurt. "If he's in there, I have to go in."

"I can drive you over," Gunn said.

"Great."

  


* * *

As Gunn drove, I brooded in the passenger seat. I wished I had the time to comfort Wes about things before I left. I could see that he figured he was to blame for what Angel had come to.

He couldn't be to blame. Because I was. I'd been sent to Angel to make sure something like this wouldn't happen. They'd called me his Messenger, but it started becoming obvious that I'd always been intended to get more deeply involved with him and his life, something I hadn't been able to do lately. And look what happened to him. Just as the Powers had foreseen, people had become faceless masses to him, and he obviously felt he could just throw a few lives away.

I'd sacrificed my life to save him. Had the Powers brought me back just to show me that I'd failed? It sure as hell seemed like They hadn't brought me back to keep him on the right path, because They barely let me see him.

Instead, Angel had been left to brood and fester in my absence. I couldn't blame Wes, Cordelia, or Gunn for letting him go this way. Wes' manners, reticence, and love for Angel would make him back off when Angel demanded it. Cordelia always pried and prodded, but that "always" was part of what would let Angel ignore her, since he was used to it. Gunn wasn't close enough to get into emotional issues with a vampire, let alone one who employed him on a freelance basis.

Then again, maybe I wouldn't have been good enough either.

As for Darla... well, apparently she took priority over any feelings Angel had for me or Wes.

Now I was reaching a point where I was contemplating the unthinkable, which turned out to be not as unthinkable as I'd thought. "Gunn, I'm about to ask you something, and it's a big thing."

"It's never anything else with you people. Shoot."

"If things go really bad... I'm hoping that you'll finish things the only way they can be finished. I'm thinking the rest of us would hesitate too long."

Gunn slid a loaded look my way. "There a reason why you elected me to do the heavy lifting? That Oracle thing tell you something?"

I didn't get to see him stake his sister until he said that. Damn. I felt like a total bastard now, but this was important. "It didn't. I just trust you, man. I don't think Wes could do it. Cordelia might be able to, if Angel or Angelus gave her the right opportunity. I don't see that happening."

"You didn't mention yourself."

"I wouldn't want to stake him."

"Like I'm dying to do it."

"My position is a bit different from Wes and Cordy's. They knew him from before, but I was _sent_. I have a duty." I squirmed under Gunn's sidelong stare. He was probably wondering where my loyalties went now. Usually I'd say that they rested with Angel, no hesitation, but after tonight.... I tried to imagine my hand on the stake, shoving it into Angel's chest, and shuddered. "But I'd probably hesitate too long too."

"Do they know about this?"

"What? Me being sent? Me having a duty? I let them know, but I don't think they get it. I don't even get it all the time." I shook my head. "I'm not talking tomorrow. I'm saying if all else fails. I'll let you know when we reach that point."

"But you just said you figured you'd all hesitate too long."

I looked at him in horror until I saw a faint smile on his lips. He was kidding. Mostly.

He kept looking at me. Finally, irritated, I asked, "What?"

"I'm still figuring you out, and I'm putting the new piece into the puzzle. Would be nice to think someone else here could be professional if it came down to it."

"Thanks."

"Guess you're the next closest thing."

"Just keep kicking me while I'm down, why don't ya?" After that, I was happy that we didn't talk for the rest of the ride. At least I'd said my piece, got that really awful contingency out into the open.

When we pulled up in front of the hotel, Gunn asked, "You want me to go in with you?"

The place seemed to writhe with pain, fear, and death, the emotions caught in it rolling over me in waves. "I don't think he'll hurt me. I don't get the feeling he's that far gone."

"I wasn't talking about Angel."

Gunn saw right through me, or it could be that he was simply more than sharp enough to understand that nothing would keep me from Angel's side short of... this. I couldn't go in to exorcise the demon with them that time, and I had to turn Angel down when he asked me to move here with him. He was a bit angry at that, even though he'd watched me stand paralyzed and horrified at the door, unable to enter.

I begged him not to move in here, but he said he could change the place, turn the darkness around. He didn't see or feel what I did.

Or maybe he did without realizing it. Maybe this hotel had helped him start his downward slide.

"Thanks, but I think I have a better chance convincing him if I go in alone," I said. "He's already stood you off, and he knows well enough how much I hate this place, so it would make my concern for him even more obvious."

I got out of Gunn's pickup truck, went through the cast iron gateway, and approached the door. The miasma didn't feel as bad or fresh this time, but it still throbbed and pulsed through my bones, still wavered in front of my eyes. When I looked back, I saw Gunn still waiting for me. I opened the unlocked door and stepped inside, knowing he wouldn't go until I went inside. Maybe not even then.

They'd really brightened the place up, making it gleam anew in its golds and shiny marble. Velvety burgundies glowed. Everything lush and rich, with a bit of an art deco look.

Lemon polish almost covered the stink of blood, fear, and dust.

A woman sat weeping and rocking in the corner as she carved patterns into her bare arm with a straight edge and mumbled, "I'm sorry, Daddy, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Daddy...." The bellhop cackled to himself as his eyes darted back and forth, wondering if anyone knew his secrets. They'd arrest and kill him if they knew what he knew. The man sitting over there reading a newspaper would soon go up to his room and swallow his gun. One young woman faced the father who'd molested her as everything around her started to shake. That one was fairly fresh. Another woman in another room upstairs spent decades there, hiding, stewing in her guilt, terror, and self-disgust. A man mutilated his lover, then sliced his own throat. A mob on the balcony gleefully prepared a noose for Angel, put it around his neck, then pushed him out to swing.

I got my face slapped around for the second time today. "Doyle." Angel, looking like Angel always looked. No evil, no Angelus that I could see. God, I'd missed him. He was still talking: "I didn't realize it was this bad for you. We can go out to the courtyard."

I sat slumped against the wall, hyperventilating. "A man found his wife and her lover together out there. They smashed his head open against the wall. I think it was in 1957."

Angel picked me up in his arms and started to carry me out. I would have told him to put me down or struggled if it hadn't felt so good to be held and I didn't want to get myself out of here so badly.

He smelled like fire and gasoline. Not for-real scent, Knowing ghost scent of things to come. Why did he smell like fire and gasoline?

By the time I could think again, I was sitting in the passenger seat of his convertible as he drove us away, the night air whipping through my hair bringing me back to myself. I spent some time just breathing. But I still wasn't tracking well, because suddenly we were parked in a garage or a warehouse or something, and I had no idea how we got there.

Angel stood near my door, just looking at me. I got out of the car and faced him. "Angel."

"I know why you're here, but it can wait, can't it?"

I wanted to say that no, hell no, it couldn't wait, but then he was holding and kissing me, and talking didn't seem possible anymore. "Missed you," he whispered into my lips. I'm not a total sap, I figured it had to be a delaying tactic at least as much as it was him really having pined away for me, but it didn't matter as much at the moment. After all, the guy making the pathetic whimpering noises was me.

Wanted him. Missed him so much over the last... however long it had been since the Powers brought me back from the dead. A few stolen quickies here and there hadn't satisfied me or reconnected me to him.

I could make this all right. He wouldn't have gotten in so deep with Darla if I'd been around....

I am not a sap.

Between kisses I managed to gasp, "If you think I can't nag you after sex, you haven't been paying attention."

"I know." He knelt in front of me and already had my belt and pants undone. He rubbed his lips against my stomach a bit, something which gave me an atavistic burst of terror even if I knew vampires didn't usually feed by ripping into their victim's abdomens. "What happened to your belly?" he asked into my skin.

"Didn't think you'd miss it. I could build it up again if you want." Time slid sideways in the Netherworld, and I kept forgetting to eat or even drink. Or sleep, a lot.

He slowly and deliberately sucked on his fingers, letting me anticipate what he intended to do, while I leaned back against his car and tried to figure out what I should do. Then he had his mouth on me, which made everything else stop. Due to the whole not-breathing thing, vampires are incredible at giving head, not that I had a huge lot of vampire experience under my belt. So to speak. Shite, I'm babbling.

He sucked me like he needed me to survive, with the same focus he used while feeding, with his whole cool, wet mouth seeming to stroke me. I felt the head of my dick hit the back of his throat as his fingers caressed my balls.

"I can't last long," I gasped as I watched his head bob.

Angel growled around the length of my cock and stroked my rim with his broad fingers, wanting it to be fast. I couldn't help bucking, my hips working on their own agenda. His hands gripped me harder, encouragingly, using my hipbones like handles as I fucked his mouth. I'd have bruises tomorrow.

I knew desperate sex, I-hurt-make-it-stop-for-awhile sex, when I was on the receiving end of it. Didn't mean I had the will or want to stop it.

When his fingers pushed up into me, I screamed and came hard, losing track of everything. I came to laid out on the trunk of Angel's car with him straddling me. "Angel... let me--"

"I stroked myself off."

And wasn't that part of everything that had gone wrong? That he had to do that kind of thing for himself all the time?

"Sorry. I forgot. Yeah, you were that good," I said, trying to make things a bit lighter. His curse never allowed me to stroke him off or blow him or fuck him, and I so wanted to. Everybody needed someone who would take care of them.

When he smiled, his teeth seemed sharper than usual for his human face. My imagination, I know. He seemed kind of like a gargoyle as he loomed over me, straddling me like this, all black sweep of long coat and heavy, jutting facial bones. Looking weirdly intent. It made me nervous.

My dick was getting cold, hanging damp out in the air. I started to tuck myself back in, but Angel pressed down close on me and started to mouth my left carotid artery. Not the first time he ever did that, and after I'd stopped freaking out the first time, I'd started to find it kind of sexy since he was so into it. Not that I didn't also get a small kick of terror out of having a vampire teasing himself with one of my major arteries. Angel told me once that he didn't mind the demon tang to my blood, that it was something of an acquired taste. And I really didn't need to know that light-snacking vampires sometimes had preferences between vein blood and arterial blood the way people either preferred white meat or dark meat, but I knew that too. From him.

Right now I felt more than a small kick of terror as he traced the artery with his lips and humped me.

The Knowing swept over me, and what it told me came right out of my mouth. "You died to try to save her life." That hurt, almost worse than the thought that he might tear into my neck.

That stopped Angel, and he went back to just straddling me. I didn't have to say which "her" I'd been talking about either. Some expression I couldn't figure out passed over his face before he said, softly, "As I waited for it, part of me wondered if this was what you'd been thinking and feeling before you jumped."

Nice to know he thought of me as he prepared to sacrifice his life for the sake of his evilish sire. (Did vamps still call them "sires" if they were women? "Dam" sounded just awful.) Then again, if you had problems dealing with the thought of your love's exes, don't ever get involved with a vampire. The Knowing had once told me that he'd had sex with every member of his little vampire family, including Spike, even aside from all the others he'd been with through his life and undeath. He was over two hundred years old after all.

That might explain why me being attracted to Wes and Cordelia didn't bother him.

"And that still couldn't save her," he said.

Back on track. I put my dick back into my pants and returned to what I was supposed to be here for. "I saw what you did tonight. I _saw_ it. I want to know why you did that." Remembering the slaughter and the way he'd left that woman dying on the floor without even calling an ambulance for her made my next words sharper than they probably should have been. "It was a terrible, terrible thing that happened with you and Darla, but do you think you're the only one who ever had everything go wrong and watch everything you love be yanked away from you?"

He had this "poor deluded Doyle, how little you understand" look on his face. "It's not the same."

"I lost the woman I loved and my whole life as a regular person. It was more than an identity crisis; it was an existential crisis, with everything I ever thought I knew turning out to be a lie. Yeah, I didn't deal with it well either, but at least me crawling into a bottle only hurt me, not other people."

"Are you sure about that? I seem to remember something about your wife being very hurt as you lashed out at her, threw your life away, and turned into an alcoholic." All said very calmly and reasonably.

I flinched. Okay, maybe I deserved that. "I'll grant you that. And later on I turned away and let a group of people be massacred, and it didn't turn out well for me. And I only found out later; I wasn't actually there to watch the monsters play with their food right in front of my eyes, and I didn't help them along by making sure their prey couldn't escape."

"They were Wolfram &amp; Hart's people. They told Darla to go out and have herself a merry little massacre only a few hours before, saying they didn't care about the people she killed. When we face demons or vampires who kill people on the scale Wolfram &amp; Hart's lawyers do, we make sure they can't do it ever again. I just stopped discriminating. I figured you would appreciate that."

Now he's trying to use me being half-demon? That's rich. Did you even admit to yourself what happened with you tonight, Angel? "But you didn't wait outside to stake Darla and Dru either. They'd never expect you to sit out there waiting for them, and they'd be sated and languid after all that blood and murder. Easier to kill. That'd be a real non-discrimination policy. But you didn't do that."

"I'm not ready to take them on yet. But I will be soon with the right training and reconnaissance." And this time I briefly caught the scent of fire and gasoline coming off him. "I have to do it alone, and I have to do it my way."

"This is the wrong way to go about it. You're putting your soul and the person you want to be at risk."

"You're talking for the Powers That Be? They have no right telling anyone what the right thing to do is." He sounded so calm and cold throughout. He wasn't Angelus, but he wasn't totally Angel either, not the Angel I knew. "They made your visions as painful as possible, then they gave them to Cordelia once you died. You may have passed the pain off as penance, but what had she done to deserve them? Then they kept you dead until they needed you. Can you really call what you have right now a life? At their beck and call any time, not eating or sleeping well, manning the Powers' information desk? I told you I was trying to figure out something I could do to get rid or make the visions better, and I meant it. I'll do the same for this Oracle thing."

Yeah, he'd been talking about it even before I'd died. He'd always hated how much agony the visions had put me through, and he'd nearly punched a hole in the wall in reaction to that one time I hit my head against his kitchen table on my way to the floor in the middle of a really bad one. I doubted Cordelia had it much better.

"They hurt you, Doyle, and they're hurting Cordelia, and I'm supposed to believe that they have the right to be arbiters on what's right and wrong?"

"This isn't about what the Powers think. It's about what I think and Wes thinks and Cordy thinks and Gunn thinks. We're all scared for you."

"And of me." He smiled a little, which made my blood run cold, then leaned down to kiss me again. "I know what I'm doing, Doyle. You'll see," he whispered against my lips.

Even through my growing disquiet about him and everything he said, I kept thinking. At least he hadn't thrown me out like he had the others. If I kept my access to him, maybe I could change his mind, bring him back to the right path. I clutched him tighter and focused all my thoughts on my next words. They had to be perfect.

Then everything went black and I came to with my back hitting a marble wall, the new grass that had started to grow when I took over the Netherworld scrunching under my feet. Oh no. Fuck no. Not now.

"Honored one, I come to you with a gift and a request." Girl, Vietnamese, holding a delicate vase, her lips not moving in time to her words. She almost flinched when I turned to face her, but she didn't because she had steel in her spine. I must have had some expression on my face.

The Knowing slid across my eyes in a cloud of malevolent darkness with teeth. He Who Devours. Not all of the great evils showed up in California. The words poured out of my mouth. "At the place where the rivers meet, you will find a stone that holds all time. That will be your weapon." They weren't English.

"Please, where are these rivers? What does the stone look like? How do I use it?"

"I cannot see; I cannot say. But it will stop him. I accept your gift. Go, because you don't have much time."

She disappeared in a flash of light, leaving the vase behind her. I learned against the wall and tried to put myself together. At least I didn't show up here before I got my dick back in my pants. Or before Angel finished sucking me down.

Then I disappeared too, showing up and staggering just as the rest of the gang walked through the door into Cordelia's apartment. "You got drunk without me?" I asked, knowing instantly. Jesus, I hoped this Oracle thing didn't keep going 24-7 like this. "Oh, you sang 'We are the Champions' without me too. In that case, thanks for not waiting up." I saw the rest of their night: bait, trap, Wes getting a chunk gnawed out of his shoulder. At least they took him to a hospital. I carefully sat him down.

Hours and hours and _hours_ had passed since I'd gotten sucked into the Netherworld of Eternal Watching, with Angel out there doing whatever crazy things he felt like doing without supervision.

"How did it go?" Cordelia asked, sounding bright and peppy on the surface. Tap at the brittle mask, and all the darkness and doubt would spill out.

"He didn't drive me away."

"That's great."

Part of her brittleness came from the vision that had led them to the trap. Did I used to look like that afterward? I carefully sat her down too and put an arm around her shoulder. She leaned against me, which told me she was really wiped. I had Wes leaning on me from the other side.

"He didn't really listen either, and I got yanked away before I could finish." Oh yeah, and I let him give me a blowjob, but I don't think that helped either. Batting a thousand, lad. "He said he's going to hunt Drusilla and Darla down alone." I saw them burning, screaming in agony, but he didn't finish them off, walking away as they ran to a hydrant to put out the flames. Fire and gasoline. They survived. Duh. What the hell was he doing?

And he looked dead inside.

"What did you see, Doyle?" Cordelia asked. I had to learn to do something about my face.

"He barbecued Drusilla and Darla but didn't bother to finish them off."

"What the hell does he think he's doing?" Cordelia sounded beyond frustrated and well into "I want to punch his ticket" territory. With her personality, it was probably safer for the world that she didn't have any ass-kicking powers to go along with her 'tude.

"It's up to us to defend the innocent, then. We'll simply have to do it without him," Wes said. And meant every word. The Mighty Mouse theme music started to play in the back of my brain.

Meanwhile, I noticed a mutual checking one another out between him and Gunn, with Gunn noticing Wes' "pansy ass." Not literally, since Wes sat on my other side, but I noticed definite eye fucking. When did that start? Was there something about being around Angel that made people pansexual or something?

Guess I wasn't as special as I thought, not in this big, happy, incestuous family.

Cordelia had a dazed, too bright look to her eyes. "I have to get some sleep."

"Get yourself some water first if you don't want to wake up wanting to die," I said.

"You suggesting that as an Oracle or a guy who drinks way too much?"

"Both."

"Got it." She gave me a peck on the cheek, then wandered off to the kitchen. There was no reason for Them to give her my visions. She hadn't done anything.

"Sounds like the party's winding down and it's my turn to check out," Gunn said, giving Wes a Look. Damn, I felt like I'd walked in on the second reel.

"I think I'll stay here and see if I can generate some more blood before I try getting up again," Wes said, sounding tired, eyes sending signals back.

Gunn glanced at me, then gave us some kind of "I'm out of here" hand signal and left. _Now_ the Knowing told me nothing. Figures. Though I kind of got the feeling that Wes had things he wanted to say to me. Hard to avoid that little epiphany.

We sat there alone together for a bit, me and Wes, with his head on my shoulder. "So," he said.

"So?"

"The talk didn't go well, though he didn't send you away."

"I got yanked on duty. And he managed to distract me for a while, so I didn't get the chance to say much." I faced a real "tell him or don't tell him" moment, which made me feel like a louse since it was a no-win either way. I slapped down the sulky little voice that said that Angel had been mine first.

"That would be the sex. You smell of it."

Wince. "Uh, yeah, that would be." But don't blame me, since I fought against that blowjob all the way?

"I cheated on him, you know. When he became so distant to me and closed himself in his room to draw endless pictures of Darla."

I didn't know.

"I wanted what I wasn't getting from him: affection, attention, some sense of connection. He knew about it."

"And?"

"And he didn't care. It meant nothing to him. I meant nothing to him."

Fuck. "I'm sorry."

"What was it like tonight?" Wes sounded so intense. Angry, confused, what-all.

I shook my head. "He wanted to distract me from saying what he knew I wanted to say, and I think he wanted to distract himself from everything. It was fast, rough, and desperate. He was scary with me afterward. I don't know where he might have gone with it if I hadn't gotten yanked."

Wes took in a deep, shuddering breath.

"It wasn't about me at all. I was like a prop," I said. I couldn't stop as it all came so clear. "He was using me and Cordelia to rationalize what he was doing."

He squeezed my arm. "Doyle, you don't have to keep going."

That seemed to break my flow. To my relief. "Yeh. Okay."

"Do you know if he'll go back to the Angel we know again?"

"I don't--"

His grip tightened. "You're the Oracle. You must know."

I didn't look at him. "It doesn't work like that."

"Doesn't it?"

I turned to face him, trying to make him see it in my face. "It doesn't! If it did, d'you think he'd be able to dick me around so easily?"

Wes stopped and let go. "I'm sorry."

"Yeh." But what the hell use was being the Powers' information desk if I couldn't do important things with it? "But I'll give it a try. I don't know what'll happen."

He looked so serious behind his glasses. "What could happen?"

"I just said I didn't know. That means I don't know. At all. I don't get to hunt things down for myself, and the Knowing comes from somewhere else. Hell, earlier I was understanding and talking in Vietnamese, and I don't know the language."

"Then be the Oracle for me." Wes removed his watch, some number where you had to wind it to keep it going, and handed it to me. "A gift of time."

"We could all use that." Usually the Knowing just came if the Powers accepted the gift, but nothing showed up. I closed my eyes and tried. Pushed, pulled, hunted the Knowing. It wasn't working. I saw nothing. I saw--

Red. Blood. Fire. Darla lying on the floor in a red dress. Blood. Eyes. Lindsey with his divided loyalties and unfulfilled wants and plastic hand and his hate that was love twisted. Blood. Broken glass in small chunks, flying in the night sky, flying onto the floor, glittering in Angel's hair and clothing. A book, he wants a book, he's a vampire... sit _down_, Wes. Curdled lust and total despair. Rumpled sheets and pale skin and a storm and red and blood and it _hurts_\--

I wrenched back into myself, looking up into Wes' wide, worried eyes. "Your heart stopped," he said.

Yeah, and it felt like someone had ripped my head open. "I didn't find out anything that'll be useful until the events are so _here_ that it won't matter anyway. Let's not do this one again." My voice sounded like a croak. Trying to wipe the horror out of his eyes, I said, "Though I have to see if I can stop Cordelia's hair from getting blonder and blonder. It looked blonder just tonight from the time I saw you guys to the time you got back, and it'll get blonder still."

The bravado thing didn't fool him for a second. He set his glasses down on the end table, then carefully snuggled in next to me on the couch. Human warm and comforting. I smelled alcohol, blood, antiseptic, and bergamot on him.

Good thing the blood smell wasn't stronger, because as it was I had the urge to peel away his bandage and lick the wound clean. Whatever the Powers did to bring me back from the dead, they better integrated my human and Bracken selves. I didn't burst out into green spikes just from sneezing anymore, and I was stronger and had better senses in human form, but sometimes I got the oddest urges. Bracken saliva had antiseptic and blood-clotting qualities, but still. Ew.

And, Friend of Angel or no, Wes would be freaked.

Having Wes' long body tangled with mine made the couch a bit cramped, but I needed this. "I think," I said, "that he'll do crazy, hurtful things and cause us a ton of pain, but he'll get better. Eventually. And we will make him grovel once he does. The bit about Angel is my opinion just as a guy, not an Oracle. In the meantime, we'll go on and be strong because that's what we do."

"I didn't realize you were such an optimist."

I closed my eyes and concentrated on not hurting so badly. "I came back from the dead. I know all about things changing."

  

### End


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